Brace Yourself

Not for the faint of heart.

At each corner I think I might find a cure for my heart sickness and then I check my email and find another reason why there is no word for home in French.

My great-Grandmother, who is, in some ways, like that tin box of secrets, acorns and pennies that you never tell anyone you have because it's too precious, is slipping away as time passes. The news from home is that she has forgotten my great-grandfather, her husband of seventy years, and that she is having... dreams.

I've known for a long time that our desire to keep others alive is mainly selfish; we want them to survive not because their lives here on this mortal coil are particularly grand anymore, but because they represent for us the past of black hills, and dusty bare feet that slips further and further away from us which each breath, and their presence keeps us from feeling that we're slipping violently off the face of the earth. It is for partially selfish reasons that I regret not taking Tim to meet her at Christmas; I want him to know the family we were before we became the family we are and, inevitably, become the family we will be. But partially I juat want him to be able to see through a tiny curtained window the way her hands still know things about life and children and checkered fabrics, even though she hasn't sewn a stitch in years.

Though she cannot remember my name, she once told me the story of the day she knew she was going to marry my grandfather, as he helped her from her horse. She told me about putting a penny under the skin of a wounded horse to heal the muscle and I wonder where her penny tricks will go when she is gone.

I should have learned when my great-grandfather died that the regret you feel for not sitting at their feet and learning their stories never goes away and cannot be resolved.

She's not gone yet.

We go away so that we can know where our homes are, only praying that our homes are still there when we return.